


may the bridges you burn be unoccupied and devoid of structural necessity

by oncewewerezombies



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ancestor-Era (Homestuck), Ancestors (Homestuck), Biting, Bulges and Nooks (Homestuck), Canon Relationships, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Growth, Duty, Enemies to Friends, F/M, Friendly Sex, Friends With Benefits, Friendship/Love, Heresy, Honor, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Puns & Word Play, References to Canon, Treachery, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:28:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24214429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oncewewerezombies/pseuds/oncewewerezombies
Summary: The Executor betrays himself and forsakes his duty to the Imperial crown as well as the Court of the Messiahs.There are unthought of benefits to running away with a bunch of heretics, blasphemers and traitors.
Relationships: Darkleer/The Dolorosa (Homestuck)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 14
Collections: Ancestor Exchange 2020





	may the bridges you burn be unoccupied and devoid of structural necessity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fox_Salz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fox_Salz/gifts).



> In an AU where Darkleer helps Signless and his crew escape and goes with them, it's only fair he gets a little thank you, a little appreciation.

This is not what you expected your life to become.

Staring out over the rail of the ship fleeing with the group of you across the ocean, you try not to think of very much. Just exist in this moment, the solidity of your own body, the rough feel of the wooden railing under the carefoally loose grip of your hands and the sensation of breath passing through your lungs as you inhale. Exhale. Strive to find a place of calmness. Not surprisingly, it has been harder to find calm over the last few weeks. Even mare so than where you were just a wiggler, unused to your STRENGTH, both of feelings and body.

The side of your skull still seems to throb, even though it has been a perigee at least since everything in your world turned upside down. It had been quite astonishing, and far out of your normal pattern of behoofiour. A lightning bolt that had led to a change of heart on the sands of the execution grounds; if you had not been as strong as you were and with the element of surprise you had gained with going rogue, none of you would have escaped. It could not have been expected, that you would move your aim to shoot the handlers holding the Psionic in check. That he would be able to struggle free of the drugs enough to cause mayhem amongst the crowd of cavalreapers and ruffiannihilators while you wrenched the rapidly warming Irons holding the prophet to the obelisk apart and threw him over your shoulder. You had done the same shortly to the misguided jadeblood who had been serving as the mutant's faux lusus, since she had been in something of a faint after hearing her fate of being consigned to the slaveblocks - or because of what was to happen to her illegal grub. It seemed (and still seems) unfair, to you, to punish a jadeblood for following the strictures of their castebreeding - protecting the progeny of the Alternian Empire through to the Trials of Grubhood, but you suppose this is one of the ways in which you have proven yourself marvellously unfit for your blood and your former position both.

The Disciple and the Psionic had been more than capable in the end of joining you in your escape as you STRONGLY jumped the side of the stadium with your unsteady and strangely precious cargo. This was not before you'd had a brief tussle with your erstwhile former employer, the Grand Highblood. It's thanks to him that the side of your skull is currently throbbing, where he snapped your right horn in half. You only have one arrowpoint now. Your executioner's bow you had abandoned on the ground, you'd had no hands to spare with the more fragile burden you'd been carrying to safety. You'd left the Grand Highblood howling your name behind you, his eyes whirling red and the bones of his arm broken from a quick grab and twist with all of your STRENGTH. You think it payment enough for your horn, you suppose. But it could be what you deserved - or not enough. You've betrayed everything that you used to hold dear.

Looking up at the moons, you sigh deeply.

"That was quite the sigh," you hear coming from behind you in smooth cultured tones, and you turn to face the troll you've found easiest to stomach being around since you fled everything that had given your life meaning and structure. The oliveblood - the Disciple - they call her Meulin - she calls to you and you still don't know why, but you've never been a hivewreaker and see no reason to start now. Despite your efforts at saving the four of them, you are quite sure she still can't stand you. You, and everything you represent. You've removed your sigil, but you're still in your uniform - what remains of it, mostly. It's better armour than you'll have the chance or coin to buy from here on in, and someone in this raggletaggle group should have some armour worthy of the name. "Care to elaborate on your troubles, Darkleer?"

"I'm sure you wouldn't want to listen to my concerns, madame, they're quite...insignificant," you say, keeping back the _canter_ by pure force of will. You're fine. You'll be just fine. Punning is foalish and grubbish and you don't need to do it to feel better. You tap your fingers very gently and carefully against the ship's rail, hearing the slap of the waves against the hull in the lull of your conversation. Clear your throat. "It comes to mind that Darkleer seems...inappropriate. In this situation."

"Yes?"

"And...potentially identifying." Not that the group of you aren't quite identifying enough. That's why you are currently on a ship destined for another continent, in the hope of moving ahead of the Empire's chain of Imperial couriers. The Empire is. Oddly backwards in some ways, because it pleases the Empress that it be so. It has been frustrating to you in the past, knowing that better ways existed but you weren't allowed to use them. Now, you're somewhat thankfoal that she is so petty and short-sighted as to cripple her own Empire in this way, and in so many others. You think it's mostly because she finds it amusing, and no other reason. She often only does things in pursuit of her own amusement, so it would not surprise you in the least. 

"Would you prefer something else?" she asks, and you can't quite withhold the feeling that she's laughing at you somehow but you don't think you mind. You suppose it is something silly to be so concerned about, in this situation. You are all fleeing for your lives. There are more important things to worry about than simply the names one is called. 

"I..." It's been so long since you've been called anything but Darkleer, and you hesitate for a moment. The knowing and somehow understanding smile on her face lets you take the plunge. "My name...is Horuss Zahhak. I suppose Horuss would be...fine. In the circumstances."

"They're very trying circumstances, indeed," the Dolorosa chuckles softly, and you feel like your spine has been gently smoothed down with velvet at the mare sound of her voice. You shouldn't be allowing yourself to feel these things. If you were a better troll, you wouldn't be here at all - you would have carried out your orders. "Well. Horuss...we will come to land in a few nights."

"Mmm." You try to remain non-committal. You assume you will not be welcome. What else could you besides entirely unwelcome? You are a reminder of what they have been through, of the tyrannical power that is seeking to destroy them. Again. Another component that brings them risk, without the accompanying prior relationship that makes the risk worth while. As soon as the ship lands, you are sure they will tell you that this is as far as you go. That your paths will no longer be yoked to each other. You think that is fair; you can not ask them to take any further risks than simply being who they are.

"I wanted to ask...did you want to come with us?" The question strikes you dumb on the spot, and sweat springs up on your brow. Indeed, you can feel it trickling down your back under your clothes, the question has you thrown so far from saddle. The Dolorosa seems to take your silence as an invitation to continue and harnesstly, you're glad she does. You don't quite know what to say, or how she means her invitation. "Kankri appreciates what you've done for us, at a great personal cost to yourself. He still is feeling quite weak, or he would have asked you himself. I..." For a moment, she hesitates and a graceful fang chews against her lower lip visibly. "I know Meulin - the Disciple - has been stand offish, but she doesn't find it easy to trust coolerblooded trolls."

"That is...quite understandable," you say, and your voice clicks in your chirpbox. Coughing slightly, you look away and down, gazing back out at the sea. You find it hard to keep your gaze on hers, especially without your darklensed ocularprotectors. It had not survived the escape, and you quite miss your usual headgear. It has been sweeps since you'd been seen anywhere without them, and you are finding facing the world without a shield quite the difficolty. "I do not blame her." You hesitate a moment yourself, unsure how to continue. Words have neighver been your forte. If you can be frank. "If you would be safer and mare at ease without me...I would not want to contribute to disharmony within your clade."

You're an outsider. An interloper. They might not have meant to make that clear, but they have. In a million different tiny ways. You do not deserve anything more than what they have shown you; without them, you would probably already be in the hands of the subjuggulators. All in all, you feel that they have done enough. And so have you. But at the same time, you do not want to leave them yet.

You have never enjoyed being alone, and you do not see any other way in the future if they cut your reins and let you loose. Who else could you possibly trust? And what right-minded troll would allow a traitor like you among them? No matter how you look at it, you are neither good clean flesh or decent red herring. Who could possibly accept you now, if this rebel cadre turn you out?

"We want you to come with us, Dark- _Horuss_ ," she says, and rests her hand on top of yours on the ship's rail. Surprised, your eyes fly to hers and you can't help but think that the expression of surprise on your face must be quite ungainly. You - don't want her to take her hand away. There have been very few other trolls who are able to tolerate or even survive being surrounded by clowns; you have always been a rarity. And it has been...a long time since someone else has touched you, quite like this. So gently. Delicately. Like you were the one that might break.

If you are to be hoofnest, you don't know that you can remember a time someone has since you became an adult.

"You're _welcome_ to come with us. If that is what you would like." She smiles a little as you look up, her hand still on yours. You are holding yourself still with the most control you can remember exercising in sweeps. Not to clench your fist, and break the wood under your hand. And this delicate moment at the same time. "I am sure we can all help each other in these...difficult times."

"Also having a blueblood to throw some weight around won't go amiss," a nasally voice interrupts you both, ruining the tension of the moment without you having to actually do it yourself. Wincing a little, you turn to look at the Psionic, who grins at you with a mouthful of teeth. It's not exactly what you would call a welcoming gesture. "And personally, I want to keep you where I can see you."

"Mituna, that is _unfair_ ," the Dolorosa says, and her hand leaves yours. You close your eyes briefly, both at the loss of her touch and the unspoken things that the Psionic does not really need to say. Of horse, it does make sense that they don't want you to disappear just yet. You colt go back, revert to your old paths of proper servitude, lower your head to take back the old bit into your mouth and let tradition rule you. You can't, and you won't, but you could not blame them for having that in the back of their minds. What's one more betrayal, on top of an old one? "Horuss is one of us now...if he wants to be."

"Horuss?" The yellowblood takes a moment to laugh, the snigger getting caught in his throat and making him take a moment to cough. It's hard to keep your distaste from your expression; you've always been hideously healthy yourself, and any sign of sickness is not a thing to be trusted. And often a reason for culling. Control, and compassion, you remind yourself. One of those has always been your watchword, and the other is new but you are learning it as quickly as you can. "I guess he's worth looking at, which is something. I guess if KK can manage to suffer through looking at his ugly face for the sake of his bow chicka wow muscles, he can stay."

" _Excuse_ me?" You can't help bristling a little, unsure if you're more offended by the way he referred to your face, or your body. Something in you flares, just a little pitch. Disgusting. Besides, the last thing you need to do in this situation is complicate things with any _hint_ of quadrantal feeling. He just laughs at you again, flashing his slashing grin of a mouth, full of pointed fangs, at you. 

"You're incorrigible, Mituna. Won't Kankri be wondering where you are by now?" Dolorosa says almost dourly, before a small smile lightens her dignified sternness. She turns back to you as the Psionic waves her words off, but nonetheless still disappears in the direction of the trap door leading to below decks, and the crowded quarters where the mutant prophet is resting. Recovering from his ordeal at the hands of the subjuggulators. You had released him from the burning Irons before they seared through to bone, but he still had injuries - from them, and other assorted indignities visited on him during his time with the inquisitormentors. You had not known him then, and had not cared what they did, you would have thought it deserved...if you'd thought on it at all.

Before you can move, the Dolorosa turns back to you and takes your hand again. Vaguely, you would swear you can feel your skin tingle, and you _know_ that you can _not_ stop sweating. 

"I hope you do decide to come with us, Horuss. I think that it would be good for you," she tells you, softly and almost solemnly as she looks deeply into your eyes. You feel almost trapped, mesmerised as she squeezes your stocky hand with its scarred and calloused fingers between the slender, elegant shapes of her own and then lets go. With another one of those secretive smiles, with just a hint of elongated fang, she turns in a studied flurry of cape and skirt before following the pissblood (the _Psionic_ ) down the hatch to below decks. Looking to the moons, you gauge their distance from the waterline and decide that you can stay outside for a while longer before the deathly rise of the sun.

Unconsciously, you touch your hand just where she touched it.

You try not to think about it too much. After all, she is a compassionate person or she would not have rescued a grub of an illegal colour, and then sought to raise him on her own. Outside the strictures and boundaries of the Caverns, and any support or recognisance that her caste entitled her to. However, after the journey across the oceans has finished - you join them. And leave with them, as they depart the outskirts of the small, lawless port town that your terribly and very visibly scarred saviour has deposited you at (you do not know the price for your passage, and you dare not ask what hold they have on an _Imperial Orphaner_ that he would assist in something like _this_ ). The prophet still finds it hard to walk for long distances, and you are one of the STRONGEST trolls you have ever met. Carrying him on your back is nothing, and considering everything else that has happened, to allow this to chafe at your pride would be mare than foalish. So you simply carry him. You set up camp with the others and do what you're told. The last thing you want to do is cause any kind of fuss.

In some ways, it is very like what you did when you with the subjuggulators, but thankfoally comes with _far_ less paperwork. None at all, in fact. You have not had to fill out a single requisition slip, or grapple with any oceanic puns while you've been with them. It is _amazingly_ restful. You feel guilty for feeling like this, but you can't help yourself. It is somehow less stressful being on the run than it ever was fulfillying your role as a subservient worker to the castes above you. To accompany the lack of paperwork, the air of incipient potential murder is almost completely gone. The Psionic still gives you a scrutinizing glance every so often, as though he had the ability to see into your thinkpan and root out any potentially endangering thoughts about running to the local temple or Imperial guard outpost, but the others seem to have accepted you. Mare or less. More than you would have expected, if you can be cankidly harnesst.

Today, your collective group has made their way to one of the border towns (more like small village) and has found the wayfaring station there completely empty. The rustblood who owned it seemed quite happy to let you have every room, and at a discounted rate as well. The accommodation is basic, but it is clean despite obvious signs of wear and age through the building. You don't think there is a single person in the community higher than olive, which is one of the reasons you're now currently hiding out in the room that you'd been given to yourself. After the weeks travelling with Signless and his clade, you have become less and less accustomed to the usual servile fawning that warmer hues will perform in front of a troll several shades colder than them. 

You're finding that it is growing very uncomfortable to be on the receiving end of it. Seeing the fear in another troll's eyes on seeing your size and the colour of your eyes, the colour of your blood, and knowing that it's based in survival instincts. And there's a certain _edge_ to the fear that comes of experience that really tastes bad in the back of your throat, choking you. After being with the Signless' clade - even after what they've been through, they are never servile or ingratiating towards you. The opposite, in fact; but it's rapidly becoming less distrust and more the close kind of banter that you have never been offered, a simple warmth and quick verbal nip of hatefriends...real companions... Almost dozing on the platform that took up most of the room, you're taken by surprise when the door opens slowly.

After all, you could not think of anyone who would join you in this moment. You are a part of the Signless' group, but you're also _apart_. Despite the feeling in your gut that says to keep the Disciple whole and hale, to calm her and soothe her - the pale wrench in your pusher every time you see her look even slightly dispirited - she won't have you. Her whole focus is caught up in the mutant - the prophet - the heretic. Everything about her revolves around him, in every quadrant, in every vacillation. There is nowhere left for you to fit, in her life. And recognising that - understanding that - it burns, it aches, it feels like you're slowly bleeding out every moment you see her but you could no more leave her than fly. If this is what your life will be, than this is what it will be. You are no stranger to hiding your feelings. It will herdly be the first time.

It's fine. You're fine.

You are nonetheless nonplussed by the person who slowly lets themself into your room, and closes the door behind with a certain final gentleness to shut out the rest of the inn. Your mouth hangs open a little, and you're are even mare taken apart at how easily the Dolorosa shrugs her usual coverings off to let them slide off her shoulders, down the length of her graceful arms onto the floor, revealing dark markings swirling in curls across her skin. In a deliberate next movement, she started to unbutton the front of her dress, and you find you could look nowhere besides into her lambently glowing jade eyes.

"Ma'am -" you choke, because at some point you have to say _something_ as she leaves all her clothes discarded in a pile at the door (apparently she was _not_ wearing any sort of undergarment under the dress) and then advances on you where you're sitting, half upright and entirely bespelled on the singular platform the room boasts. Not one of the most well padded, and you hadn't bothered to check if there was a bucket in the offing, since you could never have expected anything like this - you are still not entirely certain that this is real despite the fact that you've never been given to hallucinations before. "I - what -"

"Shut up, Horuss," she sighs as she joins you in the platform, taking your shirt in her very capable hands and starting to undo the buttons. "And call me Porrim, would you?" 

"Hard to do both at once, shut up and call you Porrim, I mean," you point out, logically, and she just laughs at you while she strips you bare. Honest, unbridled amusement in a way you think that you've rarely heard, in any of your long life. Your torso is bare to the waist before you can muster any resistance and honestly? You're not sure you really want to. It's been so long - and you're so all-fired lonely. 

When she cups your face in both her hands and kisses you, you easily surrender. Your walls have been broken and rubble for a long time - even before you left the grip of the subjuggulators. And you can see no reason to resist, or to put up any such coy plot as to play hard to get. Besides, if you did that, then she might really stop.

And that is the last thing you want.

The two of you fall back onto the platform in a confused medley of limbs and hands, kissing while both of you work at reducing you to the same state of nudity as she is currently in. It takes much less time than you would have thought, considerably less than it has before. In your experience. Once you are suitably disrobed, she pushes at your shoulder until you fall onto your back and she takes up position above you, looking up into her eyes. Something in the pit of your belly clenches, and you can feel your bulge swell in its sheath, your nook tighten. You've enough chance encounters of this kind to realise that this is going to be one of the _really_ good ones. 

"You're surprisingly handsome for how battered you are," she muses, and reaches down to caress the strands of hair hanging over your ear. Curls them around her fingers. Everything in you is focused on Porrim right now; her look, the way her fangs gleam in the soft light of the vwurmlamp before she leans in to kiss you once again. Obviously knowing what she's doing, the best way to rouse your ardour to the situation at hoof. 

"Thank you - I think," you say drily, and she laughs again before the two of you return to kissing. Her hand slowly tightens its grip in your hair, testing your reactions. Your deep moan and whole body shudder answer Porrim enough to your mind, but she pulls away for a moment all the same. "What's wrong?" Your brow furrows slightly, and you make yourself ready to pull away. "Second thoughts?"

"Mm, no," she sighs again, before kissing you again. Harder and more demandingly, while her hips slide into place between yours. With a deep churr thrumming through your thorax, you bare your throat as she drags the tips of her fangs along the sensitive skin near your jugular. That is. Hmm. Good. While you're kissing, your two bulges entwine. Her jade bulge is long enough to wrap around your thicker and less mobile one, squeezing firmly. You can't help but moan, and you hope that the walls in this place are thick. You are not sure how much the others, younger and more idealistic, would want to hear. You don't quite think the others of your group, _your_ clade - you don't think there is anything you could do that would erase what you've done, who you've been and make you worthy enough to truly belong. With them. Among them. "Oh, _Horuss_..."

"Porrim," you rumble back, and she takes charge of you and the pleasure of both of you as firmly as she manages the little eddies and currents of temper among the group of grown wigglers she calls her own. It's as easy as something foalish you might have engaged in when you were young. The two of you continue kissing, while you spread your legs wider for her so she can tuck her bulge inside your nook, a lazy rocking all the effort the two of you need to go to. The feeling isn't flushed; it doesn't have the same deepness to it. But it's comfortable and mare than you would have expected to deserve. As you both climb higher to your eventual mootual climax, she bites deeply into your throat and feeds while she fills your nook with liquid jade.

It would be an understatement to say that you orgasm harder than you ever have before in your life.

Something about the blood loss, if you were to quantify it. But also maybe partially because, she was a friend, and a good one who cared about you and what you were feeling.

Later, it's obvious that the rest of the group knows. The prophet seems to take it particularly badly in his own way, unable to look at either you or Porrim without blushing. You ignore him and keep working on reworking the leather straps in your hands, massaging leathersalve into them so they don't get too stiff and unwieldy to be used to tie up your packs. You're not used to having to do so much manetainence, but you can't say you mind it. The group have much shallower pockets than the subjuggulators did, but you have to admit, they have much more to recommend them in terms of personality. Well. Most of them.

The Psionic's commentary on the pailing between Porrim and yourself is loud, crude, obnoxious, and much too prolonged. Porrim deals with it by whacking him with a spoon whenever he gets too close to her while she's cooking, or if he makes a particularly crass comment. The Disciple doesn't seem to think much of it. That's fine. Pailing isn't what you would want to indulge in with her anyway (oh, to simply brush her hair free of tangles and pick the leaves from it, to polish her neat symmetrical horns - to give her _rest_ ). It's impossible to think she will ever feel the way you do, and you know it but you have both reached an plateau where your feelings for her can be...dealt with. Lived with. She's happier with Kankri and with their quadrant blurring, than she ever would be with your singular pale pity and you know it. You would smother her. It would be unhealthy. This is better.

At least that is what you tell yourself when it hurts the most. Possibly one of these busy nights, you will even believe it.

Sometime closer to dawn and a long few cycles ahead of now, you will show Porrim what you are working on when you have a moment. It's a cap, for your horn. Of horse, the idea for any right thinking troll, making it in a shape other than your original horn would be impossible. As impossible as the idea of wearing any sign besides your own. Hoofever, what you have worked is not an arrowhead, symmetrical and the same in every way as the horn you still have, like you used to have. You've worked instead, a downhooked spike, the same as one of hers. 

Porrim laughs so hard she cries, and then she gives you a very satisfying kiss.

This might not be the perfect moirallegiance of your dreams, indeed, you would say it has little to do with what originally drew you away from your duty in the first place. But it's quiet and good, and you are happy. It is both mare and less than what you had blindly thought you might obtain when you had felt the bolt of pale serendipity cleaving your cardiopusher in half, the moment you saw the Disciple screaming her grief while she knelt on the sands, but you think. Yes, you do think it is _better_.

You do not miss who you were and what you had at all.


End file.
